ing-room.

'Wherefore?' inquired Charles.

'I thought I was too late, and I am very glad to find no one arrived,
and Mr. and Mrs. Edmonstone not come down.'

'But where have you been?'

'I lost my way on the top of the down; I fancied some one told me there
was a view of the sea to be had there.'

'And can't you exist without a view of the sea?'

Guy laughed. 'Everything looks so dull--it is as if the view was dead or
imprisoned--walled up by wood and hill, and wanting that living ripple,
heaving and struggling.'

'And your fine rocks?' said Laura.

'I wish you could see the Shag stone,--a great island mass, sloping on
one side, precipitous on the other, with the spray dashing on it. If you
see it from ever so far off, there is still that white foam coming and
going--a glancing speck, like the light in an eye.'

'Hark! a carriage.'

'The young man and the young man's companion,' said Charles.

'How can you?' said Laura. 'What would any one suppose Mr. Thorndale to
be?'

'Not Philip's valet,' said Charles, 'if it is true that no man is a hero
to his "valley-de-sham"; whereas, what is not Philip to the Honourable
James Thorndale?'

'Philip, Alexander, and Bucephalus into the bargain,' suggested Amy,
in her demure, frightened whisper, sending all but Laura into a fit of
laughter, the harder to check because the steps of the parties concerned
were heard approaching.

Mr. Thorndale was a quiet individual, one of those of whom there is
least to be said, so complete a gentleman that it would have been an
insult, to call him gentleman-like; agreeable and clever rather than
otherwise, good-looking, with a high-bred air about him, so that it
always seemed strange that he did not make more impression.

A ring at the front-door almost immediately followed their arrival.

'Encore?' asked Philip, looking at Laura with a sort of displeased
surprise.

'Unfortunately, yes,' said Laura, drawing aside.

'One of my uncle's family parties,' said Philip. 'I wish I had not
brought Thorndale. Laura, what is to be done to prevent the tittering
that always takes place when Amy and those Harpers are together?'

'Some game?' said Laura. He signed approval; but she had time to say no
more, for her father and mother came down, and some more guests entered.

It was just such a party that continually grew up at Hollywell, for
Mr. Edmonstone was so fond of inviting, that his wife never knew in the
morning how many would assemb